Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (4570 mails)
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Re: [SLE] early vi -- ed -- edlin
- From: "Paul W. Abrahams" <abrahams@xxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 22:17:08 +0000 (UTC)
- Message-id: <200511111715.32114.abrahams@xxxxxxx>
On Friday 11 November 2005 4:01 pm, Bruce Marshall wrote:
> On Friday 11 November 2005 03:45 pm, Paul W. Abrahams wrote:
> > > d) You're on a strange or brand new *nix system. vi is almost always
the only editor you can count on being there.
> >
> > I believe that's the case in the SuSE rescue system, and it's unfortunate.
> > There are other simple editors around and it wouldn't be hard to include
> > one of them, but it's not something that I as a user can do.
>
> vi is a standard of sorts... get used to it.
I agree that it's a standard, but it's an ill-chosen one. It wouldn't be all
that hard for SuSE and others to include pico or some other more modern
editor as well -- the space it takes is, I'm pretty sure, trivial. This is a
case of tradition triumphing over rationality.
For another example of obsolete tradition, look at the manpage of stty.
Paul
> On Friday 11 November 2005 03:45 pm, Paul W. Abrahams wrote:
> > > d) You're on a strange or brand new *nix system. vi is almost always
the only editor you can count on being there.
> >
> > I believe that's the case in the SuSE rescue system, and it's unfortunate.
> > There are other simple editors around and it wouldn't be hard to include
> > one of them, but it's not something that I as a user can do.
>
> vi is a standard of sorts... get used to it.
I agree that it's a standard, but it's an ill-chosen one. It wouldn't be all
that hard for SuSE and others to include pico or some other more modern
editor as well -- the space it takes is, I'm pretty sure, trivial. This is a
case of tradition triumphing over rationality.
For another example of obsolete tradition, look at the manpage of stty.
Paul
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